A lurcher is the sort of dog Meath farmers have in mind when they put up notices on their field gates: "Hunting Dogs Will Be Shot". Sometimes these dogs are greyhounds, being trained for a very different environment, but mostly they are the common lurcher - a cross between a collie and a greyhound, "much used by poachers for catching hares and rabbits", according to the dictionary.
But lurchers have come up in the world, in Britain, and now - in Ireland, perhaps, to a lesser extent. There is even a Lurcher Society in England. And there are several mixtures. One, seen in a County Meath field, was almost certainly half wolf hound, and a report in Country Life magazine mentions grey hound/deerhound crosses. Lurchers are now, according to the article by James Douglas Home, quite a fashion with ladies, and illustrations show various eager, pointy eared, devil may care examples. Mongrels, said a blunt man. Women do say they make good housedogs, apart from their habit of food thieving. One proud owner told of her first dinner party after marriage. The starting course was laid on the table while the hostess went into her guests; when they came back, every slice of the smoked salmon was gone, except from her husband's plate. And the dog had not disturbed one knife or fork.
Another woman told of the family having had mussels for dinner, and afterwards finding the lurcher pulling, one by one, the shells from the table to see if anything had been left behind. (That's not much. A pure bred, award winning family dog has been known to mount the table and eat 11 bananas.) it is said that, being cross bred, they escape from some of the ailments of regular breeds. A knowledgeable man from Antrim, asked about this trend towards making lurchers fashionable, says he had seen people at point to points, "people in green wellies and Barbour jackets" with such specimens.
He himself goes for the more orthodox crosses, including the Irish terrier. The same man paints the most wonderful dogs in the world. The new type lurcher is not recommended for town dwellers, they need big fields, lots of exercise. They are primarily hunters and killers.